1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and a method for writing data on an optical recording medium, and more particularly, to an apparatus and a method for reducing recording time by building TOC information on data transmitted from a host and then recording data on an optical recording medium in a raw mode.
2. Description of the Related Art
Amid fierce competition among manufacturers of high-speed recording apparatuses, recording speed has been one of the most important factors in determining the performance of an entire recording apparatus. There are various methods for recording data on an optical recording medium using a recording drive including, for example, a track-at-once mode recording method in which data is recorded on an optical recording medium on a track-by-track basis, a session-at-once mode recording method in which data is recorded on an optical recording medium on a session-by-session basis, a disk-at-once mode recording method in which data is recorded on an optical recording medium on a disk-by-disk basis, and a raw mode recording method in which data is sequentially recorded on an optical recording medium ranging from a lead-in region to a lead-out region.
FIGS. 1A and 1B are diagrams illustrating a conventional raw mode recording method. More specifically, FIG. 1A is a diagram illustrating the structure of an optical recording medium. In general, an optical recording medium is comprised of three different signal regions, i.e., a lead-in region, a program region, and a lead-out region. In the lead-in region, location information of data written on an optical disk, the type of the optical disk, and running time of the data are recorded. The lead-in region is called table of contents (TOC). The program region is a region where a reproduction signal is recorded. The lead-out region is a signal region indicating the end of a program.
FIG. 1B is a diagram illustrating a conventional raw mode recording method. According to the conventional raw mode recording method, data transmitted from a host (not shown) is sequentially recorded on a lead-in region (1), a program region (3) including a pre-gap (2), and a lead-out region (4) of an optical recording medium. After completing the recording of the data on the lead-out region (4), the lead-in region (1), on which the data has already been recorded, is sought using an optical pickup (not shown), through a process which is represented by (5) in FIG. 1B. In order to seek the lead-in region (1), the rotation speed of the optical recording medium must be lowered. After locating the lead-in region (1) using the optical pickup (not shown), the data recorded on the lead-in region (1) is read using the optical pickup, and information on the optical recording medium is built, thus completing the whole recording process (6).
When the host (not shown) issues a record command and a predetermined amount of data is stored in a buffer memory (not shown) of the recording apparatus, a data recording process begins. While recording data on the optical recording medium, the recording apparatus receives data from the host and keeps checking if the data received from the host is recorded on the optical recording medium in a normal way. When the host issues a synchronize cache command to make the recording apparatus stop the recording, data that still remains in the buffer memory, i.e., data that has not yet been transferred from the buffer memory on to the optical recording medium, is all recorded on the optical recording medium. Thereafter, in order to figure out the data recorded on the optical recording medium, it is necessary to seek the lead-in region of the optical recording medium and then read TOC information from the lead-in region. By reading the TOC information from the lead-in region, it is possible to obtain information on the optical recording medium, such as a start track and an end track of the optical recording medium, the type of the optical recording medium, the way the data received from the host has been recorded on the optical recording medium, the number of tracks of the optical recording medium, and the type of the data recorded on the optical recording medium. The process of obtaining the information on the optical recording medium is included in data recording time, and it takes about 10 seconds. Therefore, the entire data recording time may be greatly and/or undesirably affected by such overhead time.